Praise for the Books


"...anyone interested in anything must read this book."
                               - Todd Lawson on After Prophecy.

"In a series of brilliant books, Tom Cheetham has single-handedly brought the work of Henry Corbin forward to the English-speaking world in its depth and originality. Writing in prose at once lucid and inspired, Cheetham accomplishes what every serious scholar of this tradition seeks: to place the mark of thought upon a living legacy." - Edward S. Casey, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, SUNY Stony Brook and author of The World at a Glance.

Cheetham’s passion for the material carries the reader into an ever-deepening appreciation of the huge importance of Henry Corbin for the re-valuation of vision and imagination. After Prophecy seems to me a faultless book. – James Hillman

"For anyone attracted to the elusive realm of creative imagination, All the World An Icon draws out and makes explicit what lives so strongly as a lure within the heart, the desire to find again our first home, the imaginal worlds and their inhabitants, the angels of creativity. As acknowledged master interpreter of the great work of Henry Corbin, Tom Cheetham follows Corbin’s path of seeing all the world as living symbol of the divine worlds. This beautiful volume goes beyond, way beyond, any of our usual self-serving inclinations and leads us into being servants of the angel of the Earth." - Robert Sardello, Author of Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness

“Tom Cheetham once again exhibits in All the World an Icon a writing gift of taking complex and esoteric ideas that range and intermingle philosophy, mysticism, poetry, psychological schools of thought— as well as Sophianic wisdom and angelology—and weaves them into a coherent fabric for the intelligent layperson interested in a humanities inflected approach to Henry Corbin’s lifelong interest in promoting the Imagination as central to a fully lived life. — Dennis Patrick Slattery, Core Faculty, Pacifica Graduate Institute and author of Day-to-Day Dante: Exploring Personal Myth Through the Divine Comedy

Henry Corbin was one of the most profound and original thinkers of the 20th century and without any doubt at all one of the most undersung — if not utterly misunderstood and spurned —scholars of our age. There are reasons for this: He chose to express his compelling and sometimes daunting meditations and ideas through the medium of the history and contents of esoteric Islamic thought. Cheetham's clear, lucid, profound reading of Corbin, his patient, knowing and sincerely humble voice, will serve to commend and demystify the timeless and urgent message found in his subject. One is tempted to say that anyone interested in anything must read this book. And I think I will. Todd Lawson, University of Toronto, Author of Reason and Inspiration in Islam

Tom Cheetham has written a powerful book. In After Prophecy, he shows how Henry Corbin's deep spirituality has the power to eliminate our "spiritual neediness," because it gives us what we are truly looking for: a non-literal god, a god that does not even ask to be called "God" (or "Goddess"), one that is the World, not beyond it. Cheetham's book should be required reading for all believers. As an atheist who feels the divine beauty of this world, I can only applaud this reading of Corbin, who replaces belief in God with a profound capacity to perceive the harmony of the sensate world. - Ginette Paris, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Author of Wisdom of the Psyche

Tom Cheetham is one of the most courageous thinkers I have ever read ... I hope you enter into a study of a work that certainly does not belong to the world of throwaway books. After Prophecy requires slow reading, for as you read these living words you are undergoing a transformation. At the end of reading, the world will not be the same. - Robert Sardello

A deep reading of The World Turned Inside Out could have the effect of turning the reader inside out! Not only will a person discover in this book a thorough understanding of the remarkable and important vision of Henry Corbin, the great French scholar of Iranian Islam. The reader will also be engaged by a politically useful understanding of the religion of Islam generally, of mystical and negative theology, of monotheism, of the philosophy of imagination, of language and the textures of textuality, and of the nature of reading and thinking. Among other things, a careful reading of this book can inform current interpretations of the politics of terrorism, its wars and the wars against it. In short, there exists here a shaking of the foundations of human perspectives that comes to nothing short of a radical revisioning of all attempts to make sense of the life and meaning of being in the world. - David L. Miller, Watson-Ledden Professor of Religion, Emeritus, Syracuse University, Core Faculty Member, Pacifica Graduate Institute

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